BANGKOK — Anti-government demonstrators swarmed dozens of polling stations in Thailand on Sunday to stop advance voting for next week’s general elections, chaining gates shut, threatening voters and preventing hundreds of thousands of people from casting ballots.
A protest faction leader was fatally shot in a confrontation near a voting center that also left 11 people wounded, the city’s emergency services said, and isolated street brawls broke out in several parts of Bangkok.
The chaos underscored the precariousness of Thailand’s fragile democracy, and the increasing weakness of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s elected administration. Yingluck had called the Feb. 2 vote in a failed bid to ease months of street protests, but police did not disperse the crowds because of longstanding orders to avert violence, which many fear would give the all-powerful army reason to stage a coup.
“It’s a sad day for democracy when the right to vote … is assaulted by a political movement that claims to be striving for reform and people’s empowerment,” Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said of the protesters. “Everything that happened today shows they are striving for the opposite.”
Sunai, who was also unable to vote, said that demonstrators forcefully intimidated would-be voters, and in at least one case attempted to strangle a man. Demonstrators were also targeted — gunmen opened fire on a group attempting to block polling near a temple, killing faction leader Sutin Tharatin while he was giving a speech on the back of a truck.
Although most polling stations in Bangkok and many in the opposition stronghold in the south were forced to close, voting proceeded largely unhindered in the rest of the country.
Still, the upheaval proved that demonstrators struggling to overthrow Yingluck have the ability to disrupt the main vote next week, and the country’s electoral commission is unlikely to stand in their way.
The commission, which agrees with protesters that the poll should be delayed, is legally mandated to ensure registered voters are able to cast ballots safely. But on Sunday, its members “just sat down and watched this thing collapse around them,” Sunai said.
The commission is supposed to be neutral, but critics have accused its members of taking sides.
Its top executive, Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, has posed for at least one smiling photo with demonstrators, and its officials failed to denounce a violent effort by protesters to disrupt candidate registration in December.
On Sunday, the commission issued no public condemnation of attempts to derail voting.
Analysts say that is because courts and the country’s independent oversight agencies are largely aligned against the current government in collusion with the army, royalists and powerful businessmen.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the U.S. is “deeply troubled” by the efforts to block polling stations and prevent voting in Thailand and urged all sides “to refrain from violence” and “exercise restraint.”
“While we do not take sides in the political dispute and strongly support freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest, preventing citizens from voting violates their universal rights and is inconsistent with democratic values,” Psaki said in a statement released Sunday.
Somchai insisted he had requested security reinforcements for polling stations on Thursday, rebutting accusations by Labor Minister Chalerm Yubumrung that he had never asked for help, the Thairath newspaper reported. Chalerm heads a special command center set up to oversee security under a state of emergency decree announced last week.
